Learning Beliefs of Engineering Faculty and Their Students: How Might Alignments and Misalignments Affect Educational Change Initiatives?

This research paper describes and compares the learning beliefs of faculty and students at an engineering college. The ways faculty and students conceptualize learning, including their epistemological beliefs and views on ‘effective’ pedagogical strategies, play an important role in how they interpret and engage in curricular change. Despite the importance of both faculty and student learning beliefs to educational reform, only a few studies have considered teacher beliefs alongside student beliefs. This study seeks to address this research gap by characterizing the learning beliefs of 35 instructors and 136 students at an undergraduate engineering school, and by exploring potential effects that within-groups variation and between-groups differences may have on educational change efforts. Variable-based analysis of quantitative survey responses reveals significant differences in the ways students and faculty conceptualize learning and learners. Compared to engineering undergraduates, instructors more strongly endorsed process-oriented conceptions of learning such as self-regulation, active knowledge construction, dynamic ability, and social or collaborative learning. The student group showed more variance in their learning beliefs than the faculty group, suggesting a pedagogical alignment among faculty that does not exist for students at the school. Given research that suggests instructors adopt pedagogical practices that reflect their beliefs, and studies that show engineering students prefer learning environments that align with their conceptions of learning, the findings highlight tensions that may arise as faculty and students engage with new curricula, non-traditional pedagogies, or transformative learning approaches. The findings suggest that, on average, engineering undergraduates might more readily accept traditional pedagogical approaches or curricular designs that are aligned with conventional views of teaching and learning. This highlights a need for developmental programs and pathways that enable faculty and students to critically reflect on and work to transform their learning beliefs.